


Protectress of the Horse Lords

by neatomosquito



Series: Daughters of Rohan [2]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Eventual Romance, F/M, Gen, Tenth Walker
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2020-11-01 10:27:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20813618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neatomosquito/pseuds/neatomosquito
Summary: After the events of Lady of the Shield hand, we find Loena and the rest of the Fellowship unbent and unbowed, determined to rid Middle Earth of the darkness that threatens to engulf it.But the threat of Orthanc grows strong, and its evil encroaches all that Loena holds dear. Shall she be able to uphold the mantle of her family line and defend Rohan from those that would undo it? Or shall she fall victim to the shadows of history, unremarkable, unremembered, a small part of the large story of Rohan's final chapter?





	1. Prologue

As the earth turned, she turned with it. From young and joyous to old and wise. Still she rode her horse, though her days of riding were much shorter. Still she slept on the grass, but she woke with an aching back. Still she clasped her sword and thrust forward her shield, but with a new slowness and soreness.

The earth turned again and her children; one a daughter of stern brow and grey eye, and the other a female child of laughter and eye-blue, had become old enough now to do the things their mother had done in her youth. They rode their horses In-The-Style-of-A-Man and they trained with the weapons discouraged for girls. They were both strong, and they were both courageous.

And yet…neither had their mother’s love for the openness of their country. None let their hair stream out behind them as they rode their horses to find the end of the world, for the sheer joy of hearing the air tearing at their ears. They were not as Wild as their mother.

Soon they would marry, and they would be happy. They would not suffer the same, dire, burning regret as she had. They would not look upon how their life had diverged, and wished that they had been born a great eagle, or a hunting-wolf, free to roam the land and mountains for as long as she wished.

She wanted to lead armies again, storm against the evil of the Mountain-men. She wanted to stride from city to city, drumming up support, screaming out her pledge to them. She wanted to be adored again, wanted to see the people race out of their small houses to watch her pass, and cry after her in song.

But now she was old, and she was coming near to dying. Soon she would be as her ancestors were, traced out in likeness is the stars above. Soon she would be with her father, and her mother, and all the horses who had bore her but bore her no longer. It was in this grey twilight that she worried always for the future of the land she had loved and protected so loyally. What would come of it? Who would come to it? When the time came, who would find the sword, don the armour, raise their voice?

Who could become spirit of the Riddermark?


	2. Return to Rohan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loena and the remaining members of the Fellowship decide how to proceed after the death of their comrade.

Legolas shoved the boat hard down towards the water nearly the moment Boromir had disappeared off down the bend in the river. “Come! Hurry! Frodo and Sam have reached the eastern shore.”

Loena looked across and there, as he had claimed, one of the three elven boats had been pulled up onto the shore. She blinked, and blinked again, swearing she had seen the flash of a grey cloak through the trees.

_Seen._ She stared at the water. Had such water always been so blue? She blinked again and pulled her hand in front of her eyes. Her knuckles were bare – red and bloody, and dotted with black dirt. She pulled her fingers into a shaking fist.

Legolas had hesitated, looking at Aragorn. Loena followed his gaze, and saw Aragorn slowly, and purposefully, tying Boromir’s arm guards firmly on. He was rusty with travel, dirtied. His clothes were sewn, and re-sewn. He looked exhausted.

_Had he always looked so exhausted?_

“You mean not to follow them,” Legolas said. His voice was tight, accusatory. She noticed he looked at her, as if for support, eyes light with righteousness.

Loena caught the torch – she looked urgently back to where the Hobbits had disappeared to, and then despairingly towards Isildur’s heir. “We must! Aragorn, we cannot split up! I have come back to protect my friends, I cannot do that if those friends are lost to the Eastern shore!”

“Frodo’s fate is no longer in our hands,” Aragorn said, with finality.

Loena dropped her eyes back to the shore, staring as hard as she could. She desperately wanted them to reappear, but they did not. She wondered whether she would ever see Frodo again. He was the only one she had not seen been reunited with after arriving back from Lothlórien.

She felt a cruel stab of hopelessness stab through her heart. There was no way. She knew, and she was certain Frodo knew too, that such a quest would claim him. There would be no return.

The Rohirrim wore black for mourning. They sang songs. They celebrated life with great feasts.

At that thought, Loena had the overwhelming urge to sprint after them, but she stilled it.

Loena closed her eyes instead, and wished Frodo well.

Aragorn had known Frodo and the burden he bore in a way that none of the others ever really had. Not even Loena, who had been the most taken by the Ring. If he had seen something in the Hobbit, something that had given him the permission to send him away, then she trusted it.

“Then it has been in vain,” Gimli said, bitterly grim. “The Fellowship has failed.”

Loena felt her heart sink. She clasped her arms around her middle, as though holding herself together, and stared off to the Eastern shore again.

“Not if we hold true to each other,” Aragorn countered, a new edge, a new _strength _to his voice. “We _will not _abandon Pippin and Merry to torment and death. Not while we have strength left.” Loena looked to Legolas and Gimli, and saw their strength returning, their valour renewed. She felt it too, a new lightness, a new purpose. “Leave all that can be spared behind. We travel light.” He might be the son of kings, but he was a Northerner too. And Loena had never seen it in him as much as when he snarled, and smiled, and spat: “Let’s hunt some orc.”

“They go to Orthanc, do they not?” Loena pressed, suddenly, her mind pushing forward. She looked first to Aragorn, who was gazing at her with a new curiosity, and then to Legolas and Gimli, who seemed as confused by her as Aragorn.

“We cannot presume—”

“They bore the white hand,” Loena said, gesturing impatiently back into the trees. “These were not Mordor orcs—”

“We do not know whether they are carrying Pippin and Merry to Sauron on the orders of the White Wizard,” Aragorn countered slowly. He surveyed her. “What do you mean to suggest?”

“Rohan,” she said emphatically, and Aragorn’s eyes widened a little with understanding. Not, she noted, with immediate enthusiasm. “They will be running through _my _lands. We should call upon the éored to track them down. We will never catch a pack of sprinting Orcs, not when they no longer need to wait for the fall of dark to move.”

“We cannot _trust _Rohan,” Aragorn reminded her. “Your king is—”

“My King is not my people,” Loena argued. She straightened; the phrase bounced in her head, like a melody, _my people, my people. _“The children of the Rohirrim are strong, and they are angry. They will want to hunt the orcs just for encroaching onto our territory. It will be _nothing _to convince Éomer and his éored to ride with us.”

Aragorn’s mouth tightened slowly. “We do not know whether we can trust him. We do not know how far Saruman has cast his net.”

Loena blustered. “_Éomer_? You truly mean to convince me that _he _has been convinced to the darkness by the Dark powers Saruman wields? Éomer loves Rohan as much as I do, more than perhaps. It would take a great army of wizards to change his mind.”

“Any mind can be changed,” Aragorn said carefully. He looked to Legolas, and Gimli, who seemed to be looking at him for some sort of leadership on the situation. “Loena, it was your own love for Rohan which turned your thoughts.”

“I know how to find him, wherever he is,” Loena said, nearly sung. “I know the way from the clutches of evil. I know which words to say, which things to call, which hearts to coax. I know the way back, Aragorn. _I know the way_. I can show him. I can show _all _of them.”

Aragorn did not react. He was watching her now behind his hand.

Gimli coughed. “Look, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather _get going_,” he snarled, clutching his axe in his hand. “I’ve got some orcs to turn into fertaliser.”

“I have my horse, still,” Loena pushed. She was thinking quickly. She stared up at Aragorn. “I would beat you all to the Orcs. I cannot take them on my own. Let me go, let me _find _Éomer and lead him to the Hobbits.”

“You have only just returned to us,” Legolas said quietly.

“If the orcs are not headed for Saruman,” Aragorn said quietly. “Then we may not meet again.”

“I saw the White Hand,” Loena said, relishing a little in _saw_. With her own eyes, she knew this now. “And I, more than anyone, know the power of the ring. Saruman might fear his master, Sauron, but he desires the Ring, as all creatures do. He’ll be taking Merry and Pippin to him. Isengard is their destination. I know it.”

“Very well,” Aragorn said. Both Legolas and Gimli turned to him, stricken. “I pray you are right.”

“I pray, too,” Loena said. “For not even the Urukhai could stand against us, if Rohan musters to our side.”

“The fellowship tears again,” Gimli announced, looking troubled.

“Frays, but only a little,” Loena corrected him, bending slightly so that she could graze the side of his cheek with her hand, and look into his eyes. “Farewell, Master Dwarf. Until we meet again.”

Next she farewelled Legolas, who held his hand to his heart and bowed his head. Then Aragorn, who clasped her arm, and beheld her.

His serious, grey eyes studied her for a moment. “You seem…_well_. You seem strong, Loena.”

“I feel strong,” Loena said seriously.

“Then ride,” Aragorn said softly, with strength, with feeling. “I know this moment. I _know _it. We shall meet again.”

Loena bowed her head, ever so slightly, honouring her friend, before tearing away.

She whistled; “Gwinig! Come!”

The horse appeared from the bushes behind them, flapping his tale impatiently as he strolled down. Legolas murmured something in Sindarin in his surprise, and Aragorn coughed a laugh.

“The elves have truly honoured you, Loena,” he said, shaking his head slightly. “This is a fine steed.”

“Not as fine as the mountain mares, bred by the hands of the Rohirrim,” Loena countered breezily. She looked back and saw Aragorn dangerously close to exasperation. “Though, uh, a kingly gift, nonetheless.”

Loena pet Gwinig’s nose, before she hoisted herself over the side of colt, readying herself on its back.

“You ride as the elves, now?” Gimli demanded, looking red and somewhat emotionally fraught under his helmet.

“Gwinig bears me such,” Loena laughed. “Though I like it not. I shall ride off now, my friends. The way is long, but full of hope. Ride!” She ordered the horse. Gwinig shifted under her, beginning to press on. “Ride, Gwinig!”

She pushed off away from the beach, her cloak snapping behind her as she did.

Gwinig neighed as he raced up the hill, and back into the trees. The heavy footed orcs were easy to follow, and Loena kept up his breakneck pace as they pushed through the forest, branches snapping around them as they went.

With her sight returned, their way became more collaborative. Loena did not have to rely so much on Gwinig’s keen sense of passage. They hurtled around trees and over rocks, through briars and around ferns and bushes. Over a small creek they nearly stumbled, but upon the next bank, and with a whisper of encouragement, Gwinig found his footing, and they began to gallop off.

“Go, Gwinig,” she whispered, and he nickered back, pushing on and on, around another tree, and then the next.

Loena slowed him, for only a moment. There, on the trees ahead, were slash lines, like the rough, coarse armoured shoulders of the orcs had forced their way through. Loena smiled grimly and pushed Gwinig towards them, breaking between these final two pines, and onto a wide, flat land.

She gasped out as she saw it. She was not in Rohan, not yet, but the nearness was intoxicating. She breathed in deeply, felt the sun in her lungs. The sky scraped above her head.

Strength returned to her, such a gushing, rushing strength that she felt suddenly bowled over, suddenly bewildered. She had to pull Gwinig to a stop, feeling the clear air rise up within her.

It felt like honour, discipline, courage. It felt a lot like love.

“Come, Gwinig,” she said, her voice sounded hoarse to her own ears. Deeper. Stronger. She felt her voice reverberate in the back of her chest. “Let me show you the lands I so love.”

They charged on, hooves free and strong against the grass beneath them. And ever above was the sun, blonde and radiant against the sky. And below them, the grass now squashed emitted the sweet, sick smell of springtime.

_Home, home, home_, with every beat of Gwinig’s hooves, they came closer.

Even with a horse as hardy as Gwinig, they were forced to retreat to a canter, and then a trot, to help him recover his strength. It was deep afternoon when Loena finally crossed into Rohan.

She stopped, and climbed down from the horse’s back. The orc tracks before her were fresh, barely a few hours old. She would catch them before the sun had properly sunk. She’d be dead before Merry and Pippin were freed, but she had another mission. Another way of freeing them.

It was a good plan. She committed herself to it.

She breathed out, letting her lungs entirely collapse onto themselves. A stirring wind pushed a tendril of her hair across her face.

_Welcome home, daughter_, it seemed to whisper. Warm, the sun beat down on her back, her shoulders. When she pushed her face up to it, it kissed freckles onto her nose.

_Welcome._

She spared not another moment, leaping onto Gwinig’s back. If her memory of the éored still served, Éomer and the others would be near here, now, patrolling the border to keep the hordes of orc at bay. Perhaps Theodred had come out with his riders.

So she turned away from the fresh tracks, ever so slightly, and re-tread the well-worn paths of the éored. Her éored.

-

The sun was piercing the horizon when she spied figures from a distance. At first, she thought they might be the orcs. Each were travelling on foot. She slowed, hesitant, but then urged Gwinig on when she saw that some were leading horses.

As she neared, she saw that the taller horses were carrying children. _Children_.

“Hail!” Loena called out, spurring Gwinig into a stop close to the gathered people. Some looked over at her in fright.

“Hail, stranger!” A man called out. He was aged, carrying a pack atop his shoulders. His eyes were still clear, though, and he stood strong. He must have been their leader. “Who comes to us, the people of the Riddermark, in this hour of need?”

“One of the Riddermark herself, though one long since returned to this land,” Loena answered. She frowned, looking amongst the people. They were all tired, dirtied. Some of the women were crying. Three of the stronger looking men were carting a man on a stretcher between them. The man had a gash on his head, and he was deathly pale beneath his Rohirric golden locks. “I am Loena, daughter of Leofwine, Ensign of the Riddermark. From where do you hail?”

“Apheseld,” the older man said, naming one of the smaller farming villages on the Southern border of the country. Loena had never gone, but she remembered the tiny dot that had represented the town whilst bending over the broad maps she’d been privy to at Meduseld. “But alas, for Apheseld stands no longer. We were attacked in the night, with orcs and fire. We are those lucky ones, who fled before the orcs came to our village.”

“Orcs?” Loena felt the blood run from her face. “Where was the éored?”

“Spread thin amongst the south, Lady,” the man said.

“What is your name, stranger?” Loena demanded.

“Alcott, son of Arden, lady,” the old man answered bravely.

“Son of Arden, I see not how the éored could have allowed your town to be so destroyed,” Loena said, furious. “Unless—”

“Apheseld’s story is a sad one, but not unshared,” Alcott said gravely.

Loena felt her stomach turn. She flinched away. She looked desperately at the people again, counting them, counting their wounds. Seeing their tears.

“The Riddermark burns,” Alcott said simply.

A cry rose up from the people before Loena, each of them gesturing, wide eyed, at something behind Loena.

She snapped around, rearing Gwinig as she did. There, at the edge of the world, black spots of orc journeyed towards them.

“They come!” Alcott cried out, his fear raising his voice. Loena, in her desperation, looked back to him. “They will always come!”

Loena reared herself around. Gwinig nickered his disquiet beneath her, clearly disliking being tossed about so significantly. If these travellers were from Apheseld, and if she had been travelling roughly north since she had crossed the border, and—Loena looked up to the sinking sun. Noting west, she ran through the maps she had seen in Meduseld one more time.

Her eyes snapped open when she realised where they were near.

Loena allowed herself a brief moment to collect herself – for she had not revisited the town of her birth for many years.

She snapped her head up. “We must all run. Westward, from here, is a walled city. Leoford. We shall be safe there.”

Alcott looked at her. He nodded hurriedly, and called his people together. “West! Turn west! With all haste!”

The orc spotted them across the field, and the evil creature’s pace quickened.

“We must be there before night,” Loena urged, calling out before her. “We must hurry!”

At her urging, the people before her picked their feet up, running up the hill before them. The men carrying the stretcher fell quickly to the back. They began to argue amongst each other. Loena spurred Gwinig on, and came up to them. As she arrived, one of them dropped one of the sides of the stretcher, and raced on ahead.

The two others called ahead in their frustration. But they had fallen too far back. With the distance, and the fear, clouding the minds of their countrymen, only Loena was near and present enough to hear them.

She slipped off Gwinig without a thought, pulling him by his mane towards them. They started at the sight of her.

“Place him upon this steed,” Loena said.

One of the young men gaped at the horse. “He has no—”

“I am aware,” Loena snapped. “As I am sure you are aware that we have limited time.” She turned back. She could hear the orcs now. Their thundering march. “Place him on Gwinig’s back. The colt will not let him fall.” Still the men hesitated. “Now!”

They did as she said, and Loena turned, pulling her bow from behind her, and an arrow from her quiver. Another few moments, and the orcs would be within range.

She closed her eyes, feeling out the vibration in the ground. The circlet Galadriel had given her shifted on her head, warm from the day’s sun.

Loena released an arrow. It shot out over the heads of Gwinig and the two men. Loena did not acknowledge them as they hurried past - she grimly watched as one of the figures collapsed, first to their knees, then against their chest, as the arrow sank true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone!! For anyone returning to this, firstly I want to apologise for such a big break in chapters. But I wanted to make sure that I could write something that was, I guess, narratively satisfying. 
> 
> A lot has happened in the world since I last updated. I hope everyone is keeping safe and that everyone is well.


End file.
